A Gene That Makes You Need Less Sleep? (2014)

What the researchers found was that the reaction to sleep deprivation was largely heritable: eighty per cent of the variation among peoples’ susceptibility to the cognitive effects of sleep deprivation was explained by genetics. She then inserted that mutation into mice genomes.The effect was clear: the animals with the mutation not only began to sleep less than their counterparts but continued functioning well even after six hours of sleep deprivation (a long time for a mouse). When Pack looked at how the pair had fared on the P.V.T.—the measure of sleep deprivation used in his earlier study—he found that the twin carrying the mutation significantly outperformed his brother.

Source: www.newyorker.com